'Stepping on one rake after another': Josh Hawley gets definitive smackdown from Princeton historian

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) triggered mockery earlier this week with a Fourth of July Christian Nationalist post that falsely attributed a quote from an anti-Semitic, white nationalist magazine to founding father Patrick Henry.

“It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” said the fake quote posted to Twitter by Hawley. “For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”

Princeton historian Kevin Kruse followed up with a thorough takedown of Hawley's claim.

"While Hawley’s proven to be especially inept at this game, this is a familiar routine by now," wrote Kruse on his personal Substack. "Someone linked to the Religious Right claims that America really is, or should be, a 'Christian nation' and we’re off on a thrilling game of Quote/Counterquote as conservatives and liberals go on a scavenger hunt looking for lines from letters and speeches to justify their own position on the role of religion in American government. The wide range of opinions trotted out in these debates never leads to any consensus, which, of course, is why we play this dumb game over and over again."

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In reality, several founding fathers at all ends of the spectrum, from John Adams in the Treaty of Tripoli to Thomas Jefferson in the letter to the Danbury Baptists, made clear the laws of the country were not based on Christian theocracy and the law was entirely secular — but you don't even have to look at them, Kruse said.

You can just go to the Constitution itself.

"Even before we get to the Bill of Rights, there is in the main body of the Constitution a ban on any and all religious tests for office holders. Article VI, Clause 3 states quite clearly that 'no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.' The Founders were extremely clear on this point and quite united, too, for they had learned through hard experience that state meddling in religion and religious influence in government could only lead to crises," wrote Kruse. "And then, of course, in the First Amendment, we get the other two explicit references to religion, which say quite clearly that the federal government would not establish any kind of state religion and, moreover, that it wouldn’t do anything to interfere with the choice of individual citizens to worship or not worship as they saw fit."

"For the last two days, Senator Josh Hawley has been busy stepping on one rake after another, trying to find some quotation from the founding generation that supports a Christian nationalist vision of America," wrote Kruse, concluding that there is no need to parse this or that quote to prove theocrats like Hawley wrong. "Show them the Constitution," he said.